Property Record
3995 SHAWN TR
Architecture and History Inventory
| Historic Name: | Katherine and Herbert A. Jacobs Second House |
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| Other Name: | |
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| Reference Number: | 4811 |
| Location (Address): | 3995 SHAWN TR |
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| County: | Dane |
| City: | Madison |
| Township/Village: | |
| Unincorporated Community: | |
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| Year Built: | 1948 |
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| Additions: | |
| Survey Date: | 1977 |
| Historic Use: | house |
| Architectural Style: | Usonian |
| Structural System: | |
| Wall Material: | Limestone |
| Architect: | FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT |
| Other Buildings On Site: | |
| Demolished?: | No |
| Demolished Date: |
| National/State Register Listing Name: | Jacobs, Herbert, Second House |
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| National Register Listing Date: | 12/31/1974 |
| State Register Listing Date: | 1/1/1989 |
| National Register Multiple Property Name: |
| Additional Information: | A 'site file' exists for this property. It contains additional information such as correspondence, newspaper clippings, or historical information. It is a public record and may be viewed in person at the Wisconsin Historical Society, State Historic Preservation Office. The second house that Frank Lloyd Wright designed for Herbert and Katherine Jacobs was the first of his solar hemicycle designs. Wright designed each one of these to respond to a given site’s climatic conditions and to express his theories on the use of curvilinear forms in architecture. The Jacobs supervised the construction and built much of the new residence themselves. Jacobs House II is a passive-solar design, well adapted to the environment. Wright designed this house in a semicircular plan that wraps around a garden, taking maximum advantage of the sun's path so that most of the generally south-facing house is lighted naturally throughout the day. He also kept in mind Wisconsin's extremes of climate. The northern facade, constructed of flat stone laid in thick and thin horizontal courses to mimic a natural limestone outcropping, is set into an earthen berm that protects it from the cold winter wind; only the ribbon windows of the second story are exposed. The southern facade, by contrast, is composed almost entirely of plate glass windows and doors extending two stories high, allowing passive solar heat to warm the house in winter. The wide-overhanging flat roof shelters the glass facade from the direct rays of summer sun. Visitors approached the two-story building from the north, where a passageway took them through the berm to the front entrance on the south side. The northern interior wall is of the same stone as the exterior, and a circular reflecting pool extends from the living area beyond the southern glass wall to the outside. Both features help blur the distinction between indoors and outdoors--a favorite Wrightian effect. Each of the five second-floor bedrooms opens onto an interior balcony, which hangs by steel cables from the ceiling beams and overlooks the ground floor on the southern side of the house. The ground floor itself is a continuous open space containing the kitchen, dining, and living areas. "Here in one room," wrote Wright, "is the whole affair of good living--the warmth and invitation of a true home." This stone-and-earth-berm Frank Lloyd Wright house was built in the form of a "solar hemicycle." Is listed as a NHL. Madison Historic Landmark: 10/25/1993 |
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| Bibliographic References: | Wisconsin State Journal, 7/24/1994, p. 3I. Buildings of Wisconsin manuscript. Perrin, Richard W. E., Historic Wisconsin Architecture, First Revised Edition (Milwaukee, 1976). A Celebration of Architecture: Wisconsin Society of Architects Tour of Significant Architecture, 1979. |
| Wisconsin Architecture and History Inventory, State Historic Preservation Office, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison, Wisconsin |